That Thing With Roland
by Pink Pandoracorn
Summary: What exactly did happen with Roland? Set in the same 'verse as A Borderlands Tale and After Jack. M for language.


**A/N: This has been mostly written out for a while now, and I'm not sure when/if I'll ever get to this part of ****_A Borderlands Tale_****, and there have been some questions about what happened with Gaige and Roland, so I pulled it out of there to post as a one-shot. It's the same 'verse as ****_After Jack_**** (obviously) and in Gaige's POV.**

So this was basically officially the worst day I'd ever had. It had started out so well, too. It was NICE out in the Wilderness Preserve, like breezy and not too hot and shit. I'd gotten to see Mordy again, got to kill a lot of Hyperion, which was pretty awesome. And then everything just went to shit. But there was still hope, right? Tranq Bloodwing, get her back to Sanctuary, maybe Tannis and Dr. Zed would have been able to figure something out for her.

But then Jack, that fucking ASSHOLE, made sure that couldn't happen. Just shooting at her to get her weak enough for the tranq to work was hard enough, but then...

I cried and thrown up, and I'd had to stop at the stream to get all of her blood off of me. No one else had really said anything. Sal had held my hair back for me, that was nice. And then we'd come right back to HQ because fuck everything else.

Mordy was gone. I mean, he was in HQ waiting for us when we got back, but now he was gone. Lilith was gone, too. I hoped she was able to help him, I really did. I just...

It was awkward. I'd known Bloodwing- and Mordecai, obviously- better than the people I usually ran around with, but not as well as Lilith and Roland did. So there was really no place for me. They were all over at Moxxi's having a drink in Bloodwing's honor or something, and I ended up alone in HQ, sitting on the big map-table.

Sal had talked me into keeping a bottle of beer in my storage deck for emergencies, and I took it out and easily cracked it open- metal fingers are good for something. If that whole day didn't count as a beer-emergency, I wasn't sure anything would.

"Gaige?" Roland's voice broke me out of my thoughts. I looked up to see him standing in the doorway, and I lifted my bottle in silent salute to him and took another drink. "You okay?"

"Shouldn't I be asking you that?" I could see the upset in his face. He was the leader. He'd been being strong for all of us for the entire day, and he looked like he was pretty close to just being done. He looked tired, like he would have rather been tucked into bed somewhere than standing there and talking to me.

"Yeah." He didn't even scold me about sitting on the map-table. That's how bad he felt. Instead, he came over and sat down next to me. I silently offered him my bottle, and after just a second, he took it and took a drink. "Thanks."

"Sure. Why don't you go get some sleep or something? I can hold things down here." It wasn't hard. Watch the monitors, keep an ear out for ECHO traffic. I could try and track down Mordy, too, but it probably wouldn't do much good. He'd probably taken himself off somewhere he'd have to climb to get to.

"Can't sleep. Bloodwing..." I could hear the nostalgic smile in his voice as he spoke, I kept my eyes on the floor in front of me. "You know, she stole half my kills, but I can't even count the number of times she saved my ass."

"Yeah. She was pretty awesome." I took the bottle back and had another drink. "Is Mordy gonna be okay, you think?"

Roland let out a long sigh. "I don't know. When he lost Moxxi, he had Bloodwing to see him through it, and he still started drinking. Now... He's probably going to bury himself at the bottom of a barrel of rakk-ale for a little while."

"Yeah, I get that."

Roland wrapped his arm around my shoulders. I knew he didn't necessarily mean anything by it, he just wanted something to hold on to. I... Yeah. I got that. I shifted until I was leaning up against him, wanting the comfort of knowing there was another person beside me.

We finished my beer in silence, passing it back and forth until it was completely gone. He frowned at the empty bottle before reaching down to set it gently on the floor. "I could get more," he offered.

"You could." I did want another drink, I didn't want him to go. I didn't want to be alone, and I didn't want to go to Moxxi's and face everyone else. "Is there anything else around here? I bet Sal's got something tucked away somewhere."

"I could look." He made no move to get up, though. From the corner of my eye, I could see that he was looking at me. And then he did move, but it wasn't away. I felt his lips, warm and trembling just a little, against my temple. Then my cheekbone. Then my cheek. I turned to look up at him, and his lips met mine.

It was a desperate kiss, all clinging and trembling, and I wrapped my arms around his neck, holding him tightly to me. He eased me down until I was flat on my back on the map table. His mouth left mine, moving down my neck, and his hands got awfully busy under my shirt. I knew where this was going, this wasn't my first go on this particular merry-go-round. I didn't necessarily want to be doing it with Roland, but he was there, and it felt... It felt like something that wasn't pain. And I was desperate for something that wasn't pain.

His hand was just moving up my thigh when I heard, "What the hell?" from the doorway.

Roland jerked away from me like I'd caught fire and sat up, and after just a second offered me his hand to help me up, too. I let him pull me into a sitting position, quickly straightening my clothing. My hair felt like it was all messed up and- my hat. Where was my hat?

Maya was frozen in the doorway, gaping at us like she'd seen a ghost. "Uh... Nevermind." She turned and almost ran out of the room. I heard her stampeding down the stairs, and then the slam of the front door. So this had gotten weird.

I slipped off the table and started hunting around for my hat. "Where'd my hat go?"

Roland peered around, twisting his body this way and that. "Uh, other side of the table. I think. I knocked it off your head when I..." He trailed off, and I could hear the guilt in his voice. He hadn't started out the day trying to get in my skirt, either.

Sure enough, there it was on the floor. "Thanks." I picked it up and jammed it on my head, and then I wasn't quite sure what to do. I sat down on the closest chair, picking at my skirt, staring hard at my shoelaces.

Roland seemed likewise unsure of himself, and what had just happened. "I'm... Sorry." He'd turned so that his profile was to me, and was staring at the open doorway where Maya had just been.

"Sorry?" I looked up at him and wrinkled my nose. "Sorry? Really? I mean, I know I'm probably not your first choice for a tumble in the sack or whatever, but that's kinda insulting."

"Uh..." He rubbed his hand across the back of his neck, refusing to meet my eyes. "Well, I didn't want to take advantage of you."

"Trust me, I could have stopped you." I lifted my left arm up. "I can break steel, Roland, I could have shoved you off."

"Uh, right."

After what felt like FOREVER, it was pretty obvious that he wasn't going to say anything else. I shook my head. "I dunno. I was just looking for something that would distract from the pain."

"Yeah." He nodded. "Yeah. Me too."

Awkward! I shifted in my chair. The silence was just... It had to go. "I'm kinda glad Maya came in. This- I mean us- would be such a bad idea for SO many reasons. I mean, you're old. Er. Older. Than me. Older than me. And the whole Lilith thing..."

"Lilith?" He looked up at me then, surprise all over his face. "We haven't been together in years."

Was he really just not getting it? How was that even possible? That was, like, the first thing I'd noticed about her. Red hair, siren tattoos, desperately wanted in Roland's pants. "Yeah. Except every time she sees you, she's trying to get in your pants again." He frowned at that. I wasn't exactly happy about it, either. Now I was going to have to tell Lilith. Tell her... what? 'Hey, you know that guy you desperately want back? Well, we got to second base. Oops.' I'd really thought the day couldn't get any worse, but apparently...

I stood up, reminding myself again that I needed to fix my bra. "Hey, can you... Do me up, here? You undid it." I turned my back on him and pulled my shirt up around my neck from over my shoulders. I waited long enough that I was pretty sure he wasn't going to do it, but then I felt him tugging on the ends and then his hands brushed against my back as he fixed it. It took a second, apparently he had more practice taking them OFF than putting them ON, but he got there. "Thanks."

"Yeah."

I dropped my clothes back down again. "I think I'm going to get another drink." My need for something else to take the edge of the day was greater than the desire to not be around the others. "I'll see you later." I made it to the door before turning back to look at him. "I gotta tell Lil. You know, when she gets back."

"Okay."

I smiled, not really feeling it. "Don't worry, I'm sure she'll still want some." He was staring at me, and I felt the need to elaborate. "Of you, I mean. Your penis."

"Right." He turned away, turning his attention to the map-table we'd just been making out on, and I took that as my cue to get the fuck out. So it was awkward. On the plus side, if there was going to be a plus side to this whole mess, we hadn't actually gotten to the naked part of what had been going on, which probably would have made things WAY worse.

I went down the stairs and out the door, walking to Moxxi's almost on auto-pilot. I stepped into the bar and saw them sitting at one of the tables, and I went over and sat down next to Sal. Maya was refusing to meet my eyes, so awkwardness there, too. Yay. Sal, though, he slid a shot of something in front of me and put his arm around my shoulders. Not in the, 'I'm going to unhook your bra with one hand' way that Roland had, he was just being a friend. Friends were good.


End file.
